Box Office Bomb: The Uma Thurman movie that failed to make £100
Not many actors have ever been able to avoid the ignominy of lending their names to an unqualified box office flop, but on the other hand, there can’t have been too many stars to have headlined a $10million production that couldn’t even cross three figures in ticket sales. Sadly, that doesn’t apply to Uma Thurman.
The fact Batman & Robin easily cleared $200m globally despite being a black mark against the good name of cinema illustrates that even Thurman’s worst credits are capable of drawing in a crowd, but the same couldn’t be said of writer and director Katherine Dieckmann’s 2009 dramatic comedy Motherhood.
The Academy Award-nominated Pulp Fiction alum heads up the cast as struggling Manhattan mother, Eliza Welsh, who does her best to contend with her two children and husband while striving to realise her ambitions of making it as a professional writer. Wondering if she’s been left at the mercy of her duties as a wife and parent, Eliza takes it upon herself to realign her priorities in the run-up to her daughter’s sixth birthday.
Hardly an egregious affront to the medium, then, even if the people clamouring to catch Motherhood at their nearest multiplex were in desperately short supply. On a worldwide level, it was a significant bomb after barely clearing $700,000 in total, but things were so dire in the United Kingdom that it bordered on the hilarious.
The meekest defence that can be mounted is that Motherhood opened on a solitary screen at London’s Piccadilly Circus Apollo, but that still doesn’t account for the fact it was seen by just 11 paying customers over the course of its first weekend. At £9 per ticket, that took its cumulative debut to an embarrassing £88, but that’s not even the worst of it.
After counting the tickets that had actually been sold, it transpired that the very first screening of Motherhood in the UK had been attended by one – that’s one – person. Imagine sitting there all alone when the lights go down for a new film starring Thurman, fellow Oscar nominee Minnie Driver, Golden Globe-winning ER star Anthony Edwards, and with a cameo from two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster as herself, only to realise when the lights came up that not so much as a single other soul was in the room.
Producer Jana Edelbaum was left suitably flummoxed when The Guardian informed her of how her film had fared. “You’re kidding? We must have broken a new record for grosses,” was the understandably downbeat response. “Think how much crap succeeds at the cinema. Motherhood is not bad. It’s a very decent movie. I’ve seen movies that are not half as good.”
She’s right in saying that it’s far from the worst film that’s ever been made, but clearly, there was absolutely nothing about Motherhood capable of convincing the average punter to shell out.
